Why Is the Penis Shaped Like that? And Other Reflections on Being Human by Jesse Bering

An unashamedly provocative author tackles the science behind those subjects we just don’t like to talk about

The long and the short of it: why the human penis is so different from that of other primates

A
s you might guess from a book with a title such as this, Jesse Bering is not
a man who worries about being shocking. In fact, he delights in it. A
self-described “godless, gay, psychological scientist with a penchant for
far-flung evolutionary theories”, he is a relentlessly provocative columnist
for Scientific American and Slate magazines, from which most of the 33 short
essays in this book are drawn.

His modus operandi is to plunder the kind of recent scientific research that
only just survives getting “zapped by the electric fencing of university
ethics boards”, and that often gets little media airtime, because it’s just
too controversial. He then subjects the science to his own teasingly
challenging interrogation. Be warned, though: this means the more outlandish
edges of sexual biology and behaviour. It means evolutionary explanations of
gyrating testicles, tales of uncle-molesting sexsomniacs and moral musings
on the vexed question of